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My husband Andrew, who began this blog in October 2007, died peacefully on September 3rd 2012, at the age of 83, after long and well-controlled illness culminating in a sudden, brief decline. I'll be posting pieces of his life writing and autobiographical reminiscences to his other blog, The Game of Life. This blog will be used for other material relevant to Andrew, beginning with the wonderful tributes to him which poured in after his death, both by email and on facebook. At some point this blog will become an archive, without further additions.— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

Thursday, 15 October 2009

“Humanity is moving ever deeper into crisis – a crisis without precedent.”

Richard Buckminster Fuller wrote this prediction
as the first line of his introduction to his book
Critical Path, published in 1980. He was 85.

In the same year Bucky’s Dymaxion Sky-Ocean World Map, the
largest, most accurate whole Earth map in human history, was issued.

“My reasons for writing this book are fourfold,” he wrote in the foreword:
(A) Because I am convinced that human knowledge by others of what this book has to say is essential to human survival.
(B) Because of my driving conviction that all of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly – right now.
(C) Because I am convinced that humanity’s fitness for continuance in the cosmic scheme no longer depends on the validity of political, religious, economic or social organizations, which altogether heretofore have been assumed to represent the many.
(D) Because, contrary to (C), I am convinced that human continuance now depends entirely upon:
(1) The intuitive wisdom of each and every individual.
(2) The individual’s comprehensive informedness.
(3) The individual’s integrity of speaking and acting only on the
individual’s own within-self-intuited and reasoned initiative.
(4) The individual’s joining action with others, as motivated only by the individually conceived consequences of so doing.
(5) The individual’s never-joining action with others, motivated only by crowd-engendered emotionalism, or by a sense of the crowd’s power to overwhelm, or in fear of holding to the course indicated by one’s own intellectual convictions.

Three decades ago, Bucky developed the World Game simulation, posing the question: How do we make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone?

The results of this research showed that the premier global strategy is the interconnection of electric power networks between regions and continents into a global energy grid, with an emphasis on tapping abundant renewable energy resources - a world wide web of electricity.

The benefits of this sustainable development world power solution are proven:

The practical limit on the distance of electrical power delivery from the time of World War 1 until the 60s was 350 miles. However 350 miles could not span the distances between two of the continent’s four national time zones. In the 60s as a consequence of new technologies of the space age, ultrahigh-voltage, super conductivity, and other technical developments occurred that made 1500 mile-delivery of electricity possible, practical and economical. This reach provided the ability to span continental time zones, whose peaks and valleys obviously differed from one another, and this meant greater profits to be derived from across-time-zone-integrated electrical energy networks. This meant that all of yesterday’s, one-half-the-time unemployed, standby generators would be usable all the time, thus swiftly doubling the operating capacity of the world’s electrical energy grid.

It was immediately evident to Bucky that it would be possible to carry the American electrical network grid across the Bering Straits from the Alaska grid to reach the extreme northeastern Russian grid, where the USSR had completed a program of installing dams and hydroelectric-power-generating stations on all their northerly flowing rivers all the way into eastern Kamchatka. About 1500 miles could interconnect the Russians’ Asiatic continent electric integrated power grid with the Alaskan grid of the industrial North American electric energy grid.

In the early years of Trudeau’s premiership of Canada, when he was about to make his first visit to Russia, Bucky gave Trudeau his first world energy network grid plan which he presented to Brezhnnev who turned it over to his experts, On his return to Canada Trudeau reported to Bucky that the experts had come back to Brezhnev with
“feasible…desirable.”

Bucky predicted that “before the end of the 1980s the computer’s
politically unbiased problem-solving prestige will have brought about the world’s completely integrated electrical-energy network grid. In CRITICAL PATH he wrote: “This world electric grid, with its omni-integrated advantage, will deliver its electrical energy anywhere, to anyone, at any one time, at one common rate. This will make possible a world-around costing and pricing system for all goods and services based realistically on the time-energy metabolic accounting system of Universe.”

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen but is beginning to happen now
as nations across the globe are linking grids. For almost two decades, GENI has pushed the proposal to link electrical grids between regions and nations with an emphasis on tapping local and remote renewable resources. In the past few months, there have been numerous announcements by politicians and business leaders with this very message, and we assert that the idea has reached critical mass and has become unstoppable.

In Europe, the "electrical supergrid" is being pushed as a backbone high-voltage network that will enable the offshore winds of the UK and Ireland to power the lights in Paris. This supergrid extended around the Mediterranean Sea will allow the abundant solar resources of the Sahara desert to power computers in Berlin. This same argument can be found in the U.S., where Energybiz Insider featured "The Super Grid: Practical or Pipe Dream?" In each case, it requires the cooperation of investor-owned utilities, municipals, cooperatives, lan downers and all levels of government. Russia is now linking to China.

In South Asia, the five nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC: India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) are discussing a regional electric grid that can deliver abundant hydropower from the Himalayas to all SAARC members. With assistance from the Asian Development Bank, this kind of development can elevate the living standards of millions of people.

THE MONEY AND YOU STORY

INNOVATIVE BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY SPARKS NEW

APPROACH TO SELLING

It began in San Francisco around 1974 when New Realities magazine ran an article about a San Francisco real estate firm, Hawthorne / Stone, that, within the space of three years, was earning more per capita than any other company in America and in the same period made its three founders, Marshall Thurber, Robert Cassil and William Raymond, millionaires.

RobertCassil, one of its principals, said: “I think the secret of this whole operation is finding people who are real winners, even if they are not sure they are real winners, and letting them manifest their success here.”

Hawthorn / Stone was doing business in a new way – by creating an ethical atmosphere embracing honesty, compassion and support – an environment
that facilitated its staff success in the outside world. In short, it created a model of how a company can nurture continual personal growth, achieve economic independence for its participants, and humanise its dealings in the market place.
Thurber said of it: “…the purpose of Hawthorne / Stone was more than a real estate company...it’s true purpose was to create and play games together, transcending the economic limitations in a satisfying environment.”

School

Using this philosophy in the business world inspired Thurber and a junior partner in the firm, Bobbi de Porter, to take the technology and the principles to ‘yet another level’. Together they founded the Burklyn Business School, a new age business school modelled after their real estate firm, providing an environment of love, support and trust in an experiment that was to create a new dimension in education.

The school opened its doors on June 19, 1978. Its method of teaching was unusual to say the least. Thurber flew in Dr George Lasanov, the designer of “Suggestopedia” – or “Superlearning”, as the Americas called it – and incorporated it into the school. From the UK he brought PETER RUSSELL to lead students in a unique form of note-taking called ‘mind-mapping’ achieved with patterns and colours instead of linear sentences, The messages were also hammered home through crazy experimental games.

Graduates from Burklyn walked away with the confidence that they could succeed in business on their own. One graduate said he had gained more useful information from six weeks at Burklyn than two years at Harvard Business School.

About four years later Thurber, keen to widen his potential audience, created a five-day workshop “Money and You: Management by Agreement”. He took it across America and, with the support of his partner, DC CORDOVA, built teams of people willing to support its principles.

By the time the workshop came to Melbourne in November 1985, it had been honed down to three-and-a-half-days and contained a very powerful mix of data and games that had been learned and applied in both Hawthorn / Stone and Burklyn.

Designer ANDREAS SEDEROF who was instrumental in bringing the workshop to Australia, says: “The significant thing about Money and You is that it has evolved and become much more accurate, much more precise in its ability to find a mark with issues. One of the things with the transformational arena is that it’s very easy to get lost in it all. With Money and You, provided you are prepared to keep going whatever your limiting barriers are, then you can get results.” Andreas says it has changed the lives of more people he knows than any other transformational workshop.

In Adelaide, promoter DI McCANN, who has been in this field for 40 years, says it’s the most powerful training she knows. “It’s having its effect here,” she told us. “We have a lot of very successful business people who use the principles, find they work and after two years retain their original enthusiasm. It’s gaining momentum as more and more people hear about it. We want the name “Money and You” to resound in people’s minds and resonate with excellence, mastery, integrity and personal and professional success.”
Diane feels this course gives people choices they may not have perceived before, in the areas of both relationships and business.

Australia and New Zealand promoter, STAN JORDAN says: “Technology is changing so rapidly, it is really difficult to keep pace. Even many of the professional development courses are basically behind the times.
“Money and You” focuses on the untapped resources in people and gives strategies to create happier and more productive employees.”

It’s not all beer and skittles, however, for those who attend. Just as Marshall Thurber discovered that the Hawthorne / Stone way didn’t work for everyone, occasionally people find “Money and You” a turnoff.

For instance, a 25-year-old computer operator walked into the workshop, signed on and an hour later stormed out saying: “No ‘Yank’ is going to tell me how to run my life!”

The “Yank”, as he called him, was ROBERT KIYOSAKI, a fourth generation Japanese-Hawaiian who had been facilitating Money and You in Australia for ten years and trained many enthusiastic Aussies to lead the workshop.

He tells of his own initial encounter with Money and You. Like the young computer operator, he stormed out of the workshop in a rage and a year later came back, his problems resolved, to become its key facilitator.

Kyosaki, interviewed by Nature and Health magazine, said the solution lies in business. “Most of our problems are economics,” he says. “Business got us into the mess and, like it or not, it will have to be business that gets us out!”

But this is business with a difference. As Hawthorn / Stone discovered
people can no longer afford to make money without assessing the impact of what they are doing. “It’s because we have not been responsible for the side effects of our businesses and have dumped waste in rivers and polluted the air with coal, oil or nuclear power that the environment has been destroyed,” Kyosaki says. “ You can make a lot of money selling cocaine but there are what we call precessional effects of that – a lot of people destroy their lives.”

Precession is a concept Kiyosaki learned studying under Dr. Buckminster Fuller. “It is a generalised principle of cause and effect which he likens to the dropping of a stone in water. The stone goes straight down but the ripples go out at 90 degrees. In the same way a bee may be intent on going after honey but there is a side effect as it brushes against the pollen of one blossom and moves on to another. The precessional effect is that it cross-pollinates other flowers.

“If the bee stopped doing this work, life on this planet would end because there would be no more plants and regeneration of life,” he says.

And so with humans. Kiyosaki believes positive changes can come about only when people become clear on their true purpose in life and stop concentrating
on just surviving. He believes each one of us has a special gift that is unique, and which, expressed as something we love to do, becomes our true purpose. The precessional results of that could save the planet.”

Money and You generates in people a greater sense of wonder about themselves.
As one participant commented: “For me, of all the things I learned at Money and You, the one that stands out above all the others is the greater sense it gave me of myself – not just as an individual – although it did that too – but as an individual who has a unique and worthwhile contribution to make to society. I now know that I count and that I can make a difference. That realisation changed my life.”

Today Money and You operates from centres in China, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand and has 70,000 graduates. Every weekend, somewhere in the world, there’s at least one Money and You happening.

Tuesday, 28 April 2009

I woke at 2.30 am . It was Thursday, January 3, 2008. Rosemary was sound asleep. There were no sounds anywhere – except for the rain which came in waves, beating lightly on the side of the unit as if to remind me that I was still alive. I lay there wondering why I was awake. I’d gone to bed after falling asleep in front of the television watching a program that reminded me of Harry Potter but wasn’t. It was just before 10 o’clock. Rosemary bundled me off to bed. She wanted to record a movie called “Hero” which we had both seen before. It was made in China and she loved it. I fell asleep almost immediately, but now, four and a half hours later I was wide awake. Why? What was I supposed to be doing? I got out of bed and walked quietly through the unit without turning on any lights. It was so quiet and the cats were nowhere to be seen. Strange! We’d been unable to buy any kitty litter and had been leaving the garage door open so Levi and Freya could get out to do their bit outside. But when I went into the garage the door was closed.

I walked back though the loungeroom and suddenly there was a very sleepy Freya sitting quietly and looking up at me as if to say: “Hey, what are you doing up at this hour?” I patted her gently and went back to bed. I lay there asking why I had been woken. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep and found myself thinking about the most extraordinary conversation I had ever participated in. It was with an eight year old girl, a very wise eight year old, whose mother had told us of the conversations she had been having with her daughter about where she came from. Intrigued, we asked whether she would be willing to talk with us and this had led to her agreement to talk with Rosemary, myself and her mother in the garden of her home near Murwillumbah on a sunny summer afternoon on March 1st 1997.

I knew then that was why I had been woken and that I had to get out of bed, find the transcribed conversation and type it up. I went back into the loungeroom, found the box containing the interviews, which had recently surfaced, and soon had the transcript in front of me. I read part of the first page and, as always, I felt a sense of awe and I realized that it was time for its release to a wider public.

The conversation that follows has never been shown to anyone since (except the SA’s mother to obtain her permission to release it) but has remained in a box with a pile of interviews we did with other adults and children about their contact with fairies.

However, it is no longer January 8, 2008, but April 28, 2009. More than a year has passed as we waited for the appropriate time to release it. This, apparently, is it.

The three of us asked questions as they came to mind. The people asking questions are designated as follows: The Mother: M; The eight-year old: SA. (Spare Angel) Rosemary: R; Andrew: A.

Note:Sometimes when the Spare Angel refers to her mother, she means her earthly mother who helped to conduct this interview; at other times she means the angel mother she had when she was in the angelic realm.

Angels

A: Do you know where you came from before you were here?

SA: Yes

A: So where was that?

SA: When you are with the angels there are a couple of levels you have to pass. I came from the second highest level.

M: We don’t know what that means.

SA: There are Spirit levels and Angel levels and other levels.

R: Do you remember what it was like?

SA: No, not really.

A: Did you choose to come down to earth?

SA: No.

A: So you were told to come?

SA: Yes.

A: Who by?

SA: The boss of the angels.

A: So why do you think you were told to come down?

SA: Because when someone dies an angel is born and they come down. Like my Mummy, when someone died she was born and she came down. But when I was born no-one died. So I was just like a “spare angel”. Then when people started dying and something went wrong with the angel system, the angels that were spare came down.

M: What went wrong with the angel system?

SA: I can’t remember.

M: You mean something going on down here or something going on up there?

SA: Something going on down here.

A: Did you come down to fix anything?

SA: No. I just came down to tell people about angels and past lives and their future, but if I'm going to, I have to tell the boss angel before I'm allowed to do it. Sometimes it can be secret.

A: So do you see your guardian angel around you?

SA: I have a big group of angels.

A: Do you see them?

SA: Yes.

A: Can you see them now?

SA: Yes.

A: How many have you got?

The Spare Angel paused and thought for a moment.

SA: Twenty.

R: What do they look like?

SA: If you were going into a big white space, a room that is just white and all you can see is chairs, they’re only very, very small. But if you’re looking at them right in front of you they’re actually quite big and you can see them without squeezing your eyes.

M: So when they’re in Heaven they are in a big white space?

SA: Yes. When they are in their level it’s like a big white room and you can’t see anything except for the chairs and the angels.

R: So when you say, when you see them here they’re big – how big?

SA: About eight or nine feet.

A: Do the guardian angels talk to you much?

SA: When I need help or something, and sometimes they tell me what to say. So if I’m in a situation at school where I don’t know what to say, they say it for me.

A: So you find yourself saying something…

SA: …that I haven’t even brought up in my mind.

M: Can you explain how they give you information about past lives?

SA: When you die you go up to Heaven and you learn a little bit about up there, then when you come down you kinda forget when you’re about eight what it was like up there, and next time you go there they have to tell you again. But with me because I stayed up in Heaven for a while they kinda just taught me all at once, so I don’t forget.

M: So when you’re looking at a person, what do you see? Do you talk to their angel?

SA: No, I talk to their person, but their person is kinda like an angel to me, so I have to tell the angel but I’m actually speaking to the person. The angel is the person, but when I think of the person I don’t reckon he’s an angel.

M: If a person came and asked you something, then you’d talk to their angels?

SA: I talk to their angels individually.

M: How do angels talk back to you?

SA: What happens is it echoes, and when it gets down to my head what’s left is only a little bit of it, so I have to tune in a bit.

M: What sort of things can the angels tell you about them?

SA: The angels can tell me, yes, I should be talking to them or not, and if the angel is good or cheeky or whatever.

Boxes

M: Can you tell Andrew what number he’s up to?

SA: Yes I could. He’s up to four.

A: What’s that mean?

SA: It’s kinda like you do a box and it has obstacles in it. You have to get over the obstacles and finish that box. Then you go onto another one and it goes all the way up to 10.

A: So does that mean I have four boxes left?

SA: You’re doing the obstacles on Four, and Four is about happiness and your happiness is about you writing books.

A: Does that mean that I have another six boxes to go to get to Ten?

SA: Yes, it doesn’t stop.

R: Do you do one box in one lifetime?

SA: No. Sometimes the boxes can take two years, one week or two days, but it can’t be one day.

R: Do you repeat boxes?

SA: Can I say about my Mum? Well she was drawn up to a black cloud and when she got to that black cloud she couldn’t go into the eighth box, so she had to start again, but before she started again she had to memorise all the happiness things and to clear away the black cloud. Then they gave her two days on each box until she got through them.

R: What number am I up to?

SA: You’re up to the ninth box. It’s about flowers and joy and stuff and experiencing in a group.

M: How long has Rosemary got before she finishes Nine?

SA: She’s only got till Wednesday. [Group laughter.]

R: How long have I been in the Nine, do you know?

SA: You started just before Christmas.

R: Then do I go on to number Ten?

SA: Yes, that’s all about money and success. [Laughter from the adults.]

A: I’ve got a long way to go to get to that. [More laughter.] How long have I been in Four?

SA : That’s a secret. I can’t tell you that one.

R: You can’t tell him how long he’s going to stay in it?

SA: Yes I can. Six more weeks.

R: What’s number Five?

SA: Number Five is about free. You’ll be free. Do I have to go through all the boxes?

R: It’s very interesting. Yes please, if you would.

SA: Number Six is about colour changes. Like if you were going somewhere and you saw a colour wherever you went, say someone had white on. Then next day another person had white on. What would happen is that you would probably see white for about a week and then it would change. You might see red. Seven is about learning and experiencing something. Eight is about communicating and talking about it.

A: What about One, Two, Three?

SA: They’re about learning how to do boxes. Three is about coming into the boxes.

M: You have main boxes too, don’t you?

SA: You’ve already got one Mum, and Rosemary you’ve got two, and you’ve got one Andrew because you’ve already been through the boxes a lot of times. Just because you’re at Four it doesn’t mean it’s the first time you’ve gone through the boxes. It could be 600 times because you do them all through your life.

A: So what’s the one box?

SA: That is number Three.

R: So what are my two boxes?

SA: They’re number Nine and…[pause] number Two.

R: So what’s two about?

SA: It’s about learning about boxes, how to do them and stuff. It’s like God tells you everything so you just have to relax and wait. You could do that by books and stuff.

Complex family relationships

M: Tell us about angels. Do they come and go and do you have the same one all your life?

SA: No, what happens is your angel could go down to earth and you could get another one. I have an issue with Mummy’s angel. He had to come down to earth. He was my brother and his mother came down, which is my mother. So she’s got my mother. His name is Ivanusha. [In other words, the Spare Angel's mother in this life has, as her angel, the one who was the SA’s mother in the angelic realm.]

M: I had an angel and he got recalled to come to earth. For some reason he’s now born on the planet so they had to give me another one, which is SA’s mother.

SA:[Referring to a book R and A had planned about psychic children] There are some things that people will tell you that sometimes have to be secret, so you have to be careful what you put in the book.

A: How will we know?

SA: Well, you’ll probably get a message not to do it or if you write it down a drink could spill on it.

Fairies

A: Tell me about fairies…do you see them?

SA: Sometimes.

A: And how long have you been doing that?

SA: Since I was born on earth. When I was a little girl I saw a blue boy sitting in a tree. He had wings. That’s when I started seeing fairies.

A: What are the fairies like that you see?

SA: Some are very small and sometimes they can have butterfly wings and they are pretty colours. Sometimes I can see them [with physical eyes] but that’s a rare occasion. They are just like a little light.

A: Do you see them physically or do you see them in your head?

SA: I see them around earth, but mostly when you see them on earth you would see a light in the shape of a fairy. It’s very rare that people on earth see their actual bodies.

A: Why is that?

SA: Because they don’t really want to be seen, just like the tooth fairy. [She smiled.] But I know who the tooth fairy is. [Laughter.]

SA: I help people if something goes wrong with their parents or if they’ve got a sore or something and it’s really really hurting.

A: So do you put your hands on or do you just talk to the angels?

SA: I talk to the angels and they do it. I helped a girl once who was new to the school. She tripped over the root of a tree and got a very big scrape on her leg. I talked to the angels and they made it better.

M: Are there angels who won’t help?

SA: No, because they are there to guard you.

A: When we die, what happens?

SA: You go back to being an angel and you learn a little bit about angel stuff and you go back out.

A: You can’t stay up there if you want to?

SA: No.

A: Oh. [Disappointed.]

M: Why can’t you stay up there?

SA: They could need you…

M: So why did you get to stay up there longer?

SA: Nothing happened down on earth while I was up there and I was born when no-one died.

M: We don’t understand.

SA: I was made when no-one needed me, so I became Gemma’s guardian angel and I helped her go through life.

R: How old was she when she died?

SA: She was only a little girl.

R: So when she died you came down?

SA: Yes.

M: So what you are talking about is the fact that no-one died, [to A and R] not like a karmic position, there was no genetic hole for her to fill. She just chose to come down. So [to SA] explain what normally happens for us!

SA: Well, you’re made. My grandmother was made when her sister died, so she had to come down and take her place. If you’ve got to come down to earth you become a guardian angel.

R: If you want to learn about angels, you have to stay up there with them, right?

SA: Yes, but you don’t really have a choice. When you’re up in Heaven you get your physical name and you get your…..[Tape unintelligible.]

Other Planets

A. Are you able to see people from other planets?

SA: I can but I don’t really like to.

A: How do you see the relationship between people on earth and people from other planets?

SA: We’re on different levels. I can see every level.

R: For people on earth, are we always angels when we die or do we go to other levels?

SA: You're always angels.

A: So we can’t go to another level and go to another planet?

SA: No, unless you’re really, really special. The first level was where there was the Queen of the Angels. She was very, very special and she was on a different planet. She came down to earth and when she died she didn’t go back up to Heaven but to one of the other planets because she was very special.

R: So are all the other beings on the other planets angels too, when they are not in the physical?

SA: Yes, they kinda change. They're kinda like the other people on the planet, or they become a plant.

A: Have you ever seen anyone from another planet?

SA: Ummm, not on earth I haven't.

A: But you have been been there?

SA: Yes.

M: What was that like?

SA: I can’t tell you that.

M: Do you ever see space ships here?

SA: Yes; sometimes they can be invisible.

M: Can you talk to them?

SA: Space ships? Yes. Can I go out and play?

SA, still very much the little girl, went outside to play with her sister while we enjoyed a cuppa. She came back about 15 minutes later and we continued from where we left off.

A: How do you talk to them [space ships] – in words or pictures?

SA: I can talk to them. It's just like I am talking to an angel, I speak to them and I just say...umm...this little girl named...Ro...I think I want her to be happy.

M: And they make the girl happy?

R: Those people can do that too?

SA: Yes. But they can only mend feelings.

R: Oh, I see. They can't fix wounds or anything?

SA: No.

Levels

M: You said you were a second level angel...

SA: You are born on the first level and if you're a guardian angel you go to the second level, otherwise you go straight down [to earth].

R: So what is an angel exactly?

SA: A person who goes to spirit. A spirit is one thing, an angel is another and the heart is another.

R: How do they work in together?

SA: The angel is what makes the spirit work and the spirit makes the heart work.

R: When the angels tell you stuff that you have been telling us, how do they tell you, do they give you pictures or words?

SA: Words into my head.

Past Lives

M: So when you die, what are you going to do then?

SA: When I die I go back to Heaven and they'll say I can go back to earth. I can't have a choice, as that will be my first death.

M: So you haven't been here before?

[She nods her head as if to say, “That’s right.”]

M: Never?

SA: I've been guarding a little girl while you've been having your past lives.

M: So you don't have any past lives?

SA: No, this is my first.

R: So did the little girl go through lots of past lives while you were guarding her?

SA: She went through...two.

M: So how can you guard and guide if you haven't lived here before?

SA: That's part of the stuff you learn when you're an angel, which you kinda forget when you're eight years old.

A: So are you going to forget?

SA: Me...no, because I chose to come down so I don't need to forget. And Ivanusha won't forget either.

M: He's born down here now, so he's the same as you?

SA: He probably won't tell most people about his life.

M: What will he be doing?

SA: He's here to guard people.

R: Do you know how old he is now?

SA: Yes, he's still in the hospital as a baby.

M: So have you met any other children who are guardian angels?

[She nodded.]

M: Who?

SA: Ian is one. [A friend of SA.]

M: And the other kids are just doing life after life like the rest of us, are they?

SA: If you're chosen to be a guardian angel, then you have to be a guardian angel. I like being a guardian angel but I like being down on earth too.

The Life of an Angel

M: So what's life like in guardian angel land?

SA: You don't eat.

M: What did you do all day?

SA: Guard.

M: You watch everyone down here?

SA: Yeah.

M asked about her other two children, whether they were guardian angels.

SA: No, they were born like you.

M: They're doing life and death stuff are they?

SA: Yeah.

M: So how do you get to be a guardian angel?

SA: You're born at the right time. I got born when no-one died and I was waiting to be a guardian angel.

A: What do you mean you got born?

SA: An angel is made.

A: By who?

SA: By angels.

M: When you say born, do you mean made?

SA: Yes.

A: So how do they do that?

SA: It's like abracadabra and you're there.

[We all shrieked with laughter.]

M: So do you know any more about it than that?SA: I know more but I can't tell you.M: Why?SA: It's a secret and if I tell you it won't be a secret any more.Seven months after this interview this wise young lady told her mother she didn't want to be bothered with the angels any more. She was incredibly bored with them. She changed "almost overnight" her mother said. Suddenly her room became tidy and she was much easier to handle. Her mother said she thinks one of the reasons for this was that her daughter had acquired a boyfriend. She was then nine years old.

But eleven years later we sent the interview to her mother, asking how she would feel if we published it with the identity of her daughter concealed behind "The Spare Angel". When told about it and shown the interview, her daughter's reaction was one of astonishment that she had ever had these thoughts. They both agreed to our request. However it seems the timing wasn't quite right yet, as we delayed putting it out there for a few more years. Funny how all sorts of things seemed to get in the way! Now, finally, here it is.